Field Visit
Date 4 October 2016
Event ID 1024436
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1024436
This stone setting is situated in a paddock on the summit of School Hill, about 70m N of Hilltop Lodge - formerly the farmstead known as Craighead. It consists of four orthostats set out at the corners of a rhombus roughly 6m square, tightly confined within a drystone-walled roundel measuring 12m in diameter. This wall is broken on the ESE where steps provide access to the interior, the ground surface of which now rises up to 0.8m above the general level of the exterior. The orthostats, which are heavily encrusted with lichen, vary in size from 1.27m high by 0.6m broad and 0.4m thick on the NE (3) to 2.2m high by 1.03m broad and 0.5m thick on the SE (2). Although the ring has been very heavily modified, it is possible that the tall stone on the SE (2) is still in its original position (Welfare 2011, 506-7). The stone on the SW (1) is distinguished by quartz banding and veining, while the silhouette of a drilled shot-hole on the E face of the NW stone (4) confirms that has been split vertically from top to bottom before re-erection. All four orthostats possess a free-running iron ring attached to an inner face no more than 0.23m above the ground surface. Guys tied to these anchored the flagstaff at the centre of the roundel - the former position of which is marked by an irregular hollow in the grass up to 0.2m deep.
Visited by HES, Survey and Recording (ATW, AMcC), 4 October 2016.
